Using the Camera

Based on experiences on holiday and since, I've found that you tend to work in a
slightly different way with a digital camera. First, because of the problems I
mention below, I lost some shots. Then there is more of a delay between pressing the
shutter and taking the picture than I'm used to. I don't think this is fundamental
to digital cameras, just part of the design of this one (and others)! Also, when you first switch
on, the camera will not make itself ready until the flash is charged, just in case.
It doesn't matter whether you want to use flash or not. So this is another delay and
might case you to miss photos. A further problem is the timeout - if you haven't
taken a photo in 30 seconds the camera turns itself off (battery preservation!), so the
whole start up sequence might be required again when you press the shutter release.
In short, I can't recommend this camera for action photography, which is a pity.
There are newer versions out now - the CoolPix 900S, 950 and 990 - which
fix many of these
problems.

When you become a little braver, or realise how rapidly your memory runs out,
you are more likely to review the pictures in the camera just after taking them,
particularly if you have taken several but only wish to keep one. The LCD isn't
ideal for this as it doesn't have the full quality of the CCD sensor, but obvious framing
errors and people's expressions can be quickly judged, and the rejected picture deleted
with one button. People do enjoy seeing immediate replay of their portraits!

You need to be disciplined. Unless you take a computer to download the
pictures, you must carry with you all the digital film (i.e. memory) that you need for the whole
trip. You can't simply just buy another roll, at least not yet. So it's a
mater of noting your total memory, estimating the pictures, and hence finding an
allowed
number of pictures per day. Of course, some days you may need more pictures, and
other days you may end up taking less. But you do need to keep a careful
eye on the number of pictures you have left. This, coupled with the slow picture
taking, moves you slightly back towards considering every picture before you take it -
perhaps not a bad thing!

Of course, if there are other photographers around, they too take an interest in
the camera, and you end up having to tell them the sort of story I'm telling here.

Memory problems

A most annoying problem first manifested itself when I changed from the 4MB card
supplied by Nikon to the 30MB card I'd bought in Edinburgh. Of course, I had tested
that card in the camera, and it had seemed to work correctly, but it seemed that once the
card was about one third full, the camera was very sensitive to voltage (perhaps) and
would frequently refuse to operate when switched on. One cure for this was to take
out the batteries (well, open the battery cover at least) for about five seconds before
every shot - inconvenient to say the least! On a number of occasions, even this
wasn't enough and you had to remove batteries, remove memory card, replace batteries and
finally replace the memory card before the camera would operate.

The camera has a clock and a few other settings which are supposed to be
retained over battery changes (one of those large capacitors, I presume). However,
on at least two occasions when using the high capacity cards, even this level of
information was lost, and the familiar flashing clock of the unset VCR display appeared.
This wasn't overnight when one might imagine a poorly connected battery might not
charge the capacitor correctly, but during the day whilst taking photos, so I can't
explain that.

Of course, as soon as I got home I complained about this behaviour to both Nikon
and my dealer - there were discussions on Nikon's excellent USA technical support forum -
the outcome of which was that Jessops exchanged the two 30MB cards (which they had
recommended in the first place!) with three 20MB cards at no extra cost. As far as I
can tell, the SanDisk 20MB cards don't suffer from this problem. I'm fairly sure
there's nothing actually wrong with the SanDisk 30MB cards, simply some incompatibility
that I suspect to be a combination of battery voltage droop at switch on and timing with
the large number of pictures that these cards can hold in highest compression mode.
Subsequently, using just the 4MB and 20MB cards, there was no problem at all,
nor using larger memory cards with later versions of the camera.

Battery problems

Digital cameras devour batteries - so either be prepared to buy a
lot (and the Nikon takes standard AA cells) or get rechargeable cells instead. As we
didn't know if we would always have mains available, the Nikon's ability to use standard
cells was a great advantage. One effect that we saw was that batteries that had
become exhausted one day would recover over the next day to provide more shots on the
third day. Perhaps the camera is excessively sensitive to battery
voltage, or the batteries aren't really suitable?

Alkalines are easy to get everywhere but expensive

NiMH batteries and their charger

Another problem was overheating with Lithium batteries - one
morning when I first picked up the camera its pouch was quite warm, and parts of the
camera were almost too hot to touch. I don't know if this was tied up with the memory
problems - but the supplier, Jessops, replaced the camera when Nikon suggested that it
should come back for servicing. I think Jessops must be a little fed up with me now!General opinion on the support forum is that NiMH rechargeable cells are the ones
to go for (in the UK Argos stores sell these), and I've now tried out a set in the
field. With the LCD off, I got 120 pictures including a couple of flash ones, and
the batteries were still going...

A good feature of the Nikon is that you can program it to turn off the LCD
monitor by default. As the LCD is one of the major consumers of power, switching it
off helps battery consumption. We worked without the LCD throughout, except where
framing was critical as the optical finder isn't a perfect judge, even though it is
coupled with the main lens zoom.

I intend to add links relating to digital photography and the Nikon CoolPix 900
as I discover them.